Virtual reality may be architecture’s new drawing board

Moving from detailed sketches to scale models to 3D printing and digital app environments, architects have long strived to give their clients a you-are-there perspective of a building while it is still on the old drawing board.

Express Newsletters

Get the latest news, sports and food features sent directly to your inbox.

But absent shrink rays and teleporters, they haven’t crossed that threshold. Until now.

In just the last few months, Marmon Mok Architects has been able to meld video-game technology with digital architectural design to create a virtual reality experience that has clients opening doors and walking around inside their future buildings long before a foundation is poured. Careful, don’t step off that ledge.

“The biggest problem has been scale,” said managing partner Stephen R. Souter during a recent demonstration of the firm’s new HTC Vive virtual reality platform at its downtown offices overlooking the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts — one of the firm’s projects, along with the new Convention Center expansion and many other San Antonio landmarks, from the airport to the Alamodome.

“We could always show locations and plans and details, but it’s been very difficult to communicate a sense of scale and volume until a building is built — and then it can be very expensive to change,” Souter said. “With this technology, a client can really feel the scale of the space, how it feels to be in it. It’s just a revolutionary method of presentation for our clients. It’s going to change the whole way we do business.”

Photo: Photo Illustration Courtesy Carlos Lucio / Marmon Mok

Image 1of/9

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 9

Registering the scale of a space has been a problem with past presentation processes in architecture. With virtual reality, a client can get a good idea how tall the ceilings are and how vast the space is in a church design. less

Registering the scale of a space has been a problem with past presentation processes in architecture. With virtual reality, a client can get a good idea how tall the ceilings are and how vast the space is in a ... more

Photo: Photo Illustration Courtesy Carlos Lucio / Marmon Mok

Image 2 of 9

View the football field from the cheap seats or a luxury box via VR.

View the football field from the cheap seats or a luxury box via VR.

Photo: Photo Illustration By Carlos Lucio / Marmon Mok

Image 3 of 9

With VR, you can pick a seat in the Northside Independent School District's North Side Gym, sit in it, and see what the views of the court are like.

With VR, you can pick a seat in the Northside Independent School District's North Side Gym, sit in it, and see what the views of the court are like.

Photo: Photo Illustration Courtesy Carlos Lucio / Marmon Mok

Image 4 of 9

School administrators can walk around a school's library in a VR environment and make changes -- long before construction begins.

School administrators can walk around a school's library in a VR environment and make changes -- long before construction begins.

Photo: Photo Illustration By Carlos Lucio / Marmon Mok

Image 5 of 9

With VR, buildings such as a YMCA can be viewed at various times of day, from dawn to sunset.

With VR, buildings such as a YMCA can be viewed at various times of day, from dawn to sunset.

Photo: Photo Illustration By Carlos Lucio / Marmon Mok

Image 6 of 9

The evolution of 3D (from left to right): 3D glasses, Google Cardboard, Samsung’s Gear and the HTC Vive VR platform.

The evolution of 3D (from left to right): 3D glasses, Google Cardboard, Samsung’s Gear and the HTC Vive VR platform.

Photo: Courtesy Marmon Mok Architecture

Image 7 of 9

Graphic designer Carlos Lucio of Marmon Mok Architecture works the HTC Vive Virtual Reality platform in what is now the VR room in the architects' downtown offices.

Graphic designer Carlos Lucio of Marmon Mok Architecture works the HTC Vive Virtual Reality platform in what is now the VR room in the architects' downtown offices.

Those phone-app systems are a quantum leap ahead of watercolor renderings and old 2D, laser-pointer, conference-room presentations, but the drawback, Greenwell said, is that you are stuck in one spot. You can’t peek behind the altar of a church, or a explore the science lab of a high school or sit in a luxury box at a football stadium.

With the HTC Vive system, Marmon Mok clients have been able to do all these things in the recently installed VR room at the firm’s downtown offices. Sensors in the corners of the room allow for what’s called “full-room tracking,” which lets visitors walk around in the space.

For example, Greenwell said, in a library design the firm is working on, “there is a low wall in one room with geomentric shapes cut through it, and the client was able to get down and crawl through this hole in the wall, the way a kid would. He was able to experience how a child would feel in that space. We are able to put somebody in real space now.”

One of those clients is Wayne Pruski, executive director of facilities, planning and development for the Schertz-Cibolo Universal City School District. Marmon Mok is in the initial phases of design for renovation of Samuel Clemens High School.

In his first experience with architecture and virtual reality, Pruski toured the proposed new auditorium, career and technology building, auxiliary gym, dance rehearsal hall and offices and classrooms.

“Being able to see and experience the size of rooms and other spaces was a real treat, as well as valuable learning for what to anticipate those spaces will be, prior to completion of the project,” Pruski said via email. “Usually, the owners see the application of design as the project unfolds (is under construction), but with this ‘virtual walk,’ owners can now see what is designed and how spaces will look and relate to existing conditions and to the site.”

According to a July survey of 376 architects around the world by the online magazine cgarchitect.com, 77 percent said they were currently experimenting with VR technology or planning to experiment with it in the near future.

But a far smaller group of architects is actually putting VR into production.

Marmon Mok is one of the first San Antonio firms to employ a sophisticated system such as the HTC Vive, thanks in large part to visualization/graphic designer Carlos Lucio, who also teaches video-game design (specializing in background cityscapes and buildings) at the University of the Incarnate Word.

“It’s a lot of fun to adapt video-game technology to architecture,” said Lucio, who earlier this year attended SIGGRAPH 2016, the world’s largest conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques.

“It was incredible to see how very few architects were taking advantage of this technology,” he said. “We’re one of the first architectural firms using this.”

With software called Iris Prospect, techies such as Greenwell and Lucio can make architects’ lives easier by transforming their day’s work into headset-ready environments.

At the end of a work day, architects transfer their design work from their computers to the VR platform. All it takes, Greenwell said, is a computer not too different from one you’d find at home — and a terrifically souped-up video-game graphics card.

“Then we can put on the headset and actually walk around in the space and point to things that need changing,” said Marmom Mok architect and partner Angel Garcia. “Clients can do the same. It makes the whole process a lot more visual.”

VR, along with related technologies such augmented reality (Pokémon Go, for example), is an intensifying tsunami in all kinds of fields, including architecture, said Andrew Trickett, co-founder of the San Antonio tech company Merge VR, which makes smartphone-based headsets.

While he sees the entertainment side of the technology continuing to dominate consumer markets, Trickett is getting a lot more requests for “utilitarian” uses for VR, such as architecture — or education, medicine, tourism and professional sports.

“We’ve seen a lot of interest from school districts,” he said. “For example, they’re asking about creating a demonstration of what it would be like to be in the human bloodstream. It’s far more immersive than reading about it in a book or even seeing a film. The child will enjoy it more and therefore remember it more.”

Medical uses include psychiatric therapies for autism, PTSD and phobias.

“Say you have a fear of snakes,” Trickett said. “VR treatment could be set up like a game with 25 levels where you start with a tiny snake that’s way over there and work your way through the levels.

“There are many uses to which we can put this technology,” he added. “Video games will continue to be huge, but I’m also very excited about the more utilitarian uses.”

Marmon Mok’s Souter said his clients already have entered virtual rooms and decided that a ceiling was too low or a wall needed a window punched in it to allow more light.

“We can make those changes long before getting anywhere close to the construction process,” he said. “So, there are a lot of benefits to the decision-making process.”